Let's say you run a server. The server is empty most of the time. You want to do something about it by having a couple of idles on the server. But you don't really have any friends (who are willing to help). However, you have the following:

your BF2 key registry location (Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Electronic Arts\EA Games\Battlefield 2\ergc on Win10 64 Bit [scroll to the very bottom to see how to find the location])

admin rights on the computer you will be using

You have all the ingredients? Let's get started!

Step 1: Setting up the CD keysThese will be needed in order to run each instance with a different CD key.

Press the windows and R keys to open the run window.

Type "regedit" and hit enter/click OK.

Windows will ask you, whether you want to allow this app to make changes to the system. Click yes.

Go to your BF2 key location (by copying the path mentioned above or following the instructions at the very bottom).

Check which accounts CD key is currently "installed".

Mark the registry entry with the CD key and go to File > Export.

Save the file somewhere and ideally name it with the account name the cd key belongs to.

Close the registry editor.

Open the exported file with a text editor (the windows editor will work just fine).

In the line with your CD key (@="x9392AAAA-AAAA-AAAA-AAAA-AAAA") change the CD key to one of a different account so that you get @="x9392BBBB-BBBB-BBBB-BBBB-BBBB" .

Go to File > Save as and save the file under the different accounts name.

Repeat steps 9 to 11 for every account you want to use (including the account you will be playing with).

What you should have now: A .reg file with the CD key for every account you want to use.You might want to put these files into your BF2 install folder to have all your BF2 files in one location.

Step 2: Setting up the account in game

Open BF2.

Click "Manage Accounts" in the account selection menu.

Click "Retrieve Account".

Enter your account details. Make sure to check "remember password".

Repeat these steps for every account you want to use.

Step 3: Setting up the launch scriptThe script will set the necessary launch flags for BF2 and handle CD key switching.

Open a text editor (again, the windows one will do fine).

In the first line, paste REG import "C:\Program Files (x86)\EA Games\Battlefield 2\account-1.reg" . You might need to change the path and filename.

The first part (start ...) simply starts BF2 in it's install folder. Again, you will need to adjust the path if your copy of BF2 is installed elsewhere.

The +restart 1 flag skips the intro.

The +lowPriority 1 makes the game run in low priority, meaning that your computers ressources will be made available to other programs if needed.

The +playerName "account-1" +playerPassword "account-1-password" flags will log the player in automatically

The +joinServer 127.0.0.1 flag will tell BF2 to automatically join the specified server. You will of course need to change the IP to that of your server.

The +szx 800 +szy 600 +fullscreen 0 flags make the game in windowed mode with the lowest possible resolution.

The +multi 1 flag is necessary to be able to run multiple instances of the game.

After these two commands, we need to wait for the first instance to start the game and join the server. Therefore we ping ourself for a set amount of seconds: ping -n 30 -w 1 127.0.0.1>nul .30 seconds work fine for me, but you might need to adjust this (-n [number of seconds]) based on the speed of your computer.

You will need these three lines for every instance you want to run. However, you wont need the last line (ping ...) after starting the last instance.

When you prepared all instances, go to File > Save as and select "All files" under filetype.

Save the file as a .bat file (mine is called start-bf2-idles.bat).

Right click the .bat file and under under "Send to" click "Desktop (create shortcut)".

Go to your desktop, right click the shortcut for the .bat file and click "properties".